9 to 5

The plan was always that I would be the stay-at-home dad and that in our family mother would be the breadwinner. This is what we said when S- was being matched by the adoption panel with us.

However, I think M-, our social worker, was disappointed when all these things came to pass and, after our time off work building the bond with S-, G- put on her suit and got back on the treadmill.

G-, being the steadfast person she is, didn’t rave or moan or whine. She just got on with it: ‘life is how it is and we’ve got to do these things,’ she said.

To her credit M- choked it back, and has been a rock since. At Christmas, she bought S- a book called Owl bables to help S- cope with her mother’s absence during the day. The symbolism of the story may seem overdone to us adults – the owl babies huddle on a branch all night and call for mummy, who turns up at the end of the book – but S- loves it.

‘Mummy,’ she yells 2 or 3 times a day now, racing across the lounge to point at the TV. So on goes the DVD that came with the book, again. Sometimes we even read the story, too, or at least turn the pages.

Much of this blog seems to be about birds, but S- also now has a picture of an owlet on her bedroom wall: a photograph we brought on a recent week away in the Cotswolds and shoved in a clip frame.

When we see G- pull up in her car at the end of the working day S- wriggles and giggles with excitement, but all this energy seems to vanish when G- actually gets into the house. Suddenly there’s a ton of other stuff to be interested in: books, hairbrush, toys… And when it comes to bedtime it’s always ‘dada’, ‘dada’, although we make sure G- tucks her up at least a few times a week.

It’s the same in the morning: S- is getting increasingly reluctant to say bye-bye to her mother, even though I know we’ll later spend quite a bit of the day calling G- up on the toy telephone.

G- won’t thank me for this but I really admire her for the way she copes with S-’s apparent disinterest. I know it would be tearing me up and I wouldn’t be able to help getting depressed about it. Yet G- stays so calm and positive, and interested. And uncomplaining.

But that, as I said, is the sort of person my wife is.

Book of love

G- and I are both bookworms, and so I thought it might be useful/interesting/not completely dull to list some of our recommended books on parenting.

Then I remembered that one of the things we had to do way back when we went to our adoption panel to be approved for a child was to provide a reading list.

Don’t ask me why [perhaps it was just to show what swots we are]. The panel certainly didn’t – ask us about our reading, I mean. [Perhaps they could tell - that we were swots, I mean.]

So was it a complete waste of time? Well, almost but not quite, because I can now save myself a bit of effort and cut and paste the list.

• Archer C. First steps in parenting the child who hurts. Jessica Kingsley Publishers 1999.
• Campbell N. Blue-eyed son. Pan 2005.
• Cleese J, Skynner R. Families and how to survive them. Vermillion 1993
• Fahlberg V. A child’s journey through placement. BAAF 1994
• Ford G. The contented toddler years. Vermillion 2006
• Faber A, Mazlish E. How to talk so kids will listen and listen so kids will talk. Piccadilly Press, 2001
• Gerhardt S. Why love matters. Routledge, 2004.
• Hirst M. Loving and living with traumatised children. Reflections by adoptive parents. BAAF 2006
• Layard R. Happiness. Allen Lane 2006.
• The adopter’s handbook. BAAF 2006
• Stoppard M. Complete baby and childcare. Dorland Kindersley 2006
• Verrier N. The primal wound. Gateway 1999.

The one that our social workers were keen on was The Primal Wound by Nancy Verrier. This helped introduce us to social work thinking on adoption and to theories on the damaging effects of childhood trauma, abandonment and loss. But it is a bit of a slog, and any reader should bear in mind that it’s based almost exclusively on research with adopted adults who were relinquished as babies. Here in the UK at least, that’s an increasingly rare phenomenon, and there was always a question in my mind as to how up-to-date the book is.

So which ones did we really like? Well, Sue Gerhardt’s Why Love Matters, which does a fantastic job of explaining early child development, and the one with a long title about talking by Faber and Mazlish. This one’s brilliant at encouraging a healthy relationship with your kids.

Nicky Campbell, who’s a TV presenter in the UK, was adopted and his book is an interesting insight into how it feels to have both birth and adoptive parents [as well as a large extended family]. He’s particularly eloquent on the subject of identity and how adoption affects the jigsaw of your personality.

Richard Layard’s Happiness is nothing less than a prescription for a healthier society and a better environment for us to bring our kids up in. That to me is worth at least a look – which you can do from here.

The other author I should mention is Gina Ford. We found that S- really benefited from routine and stability, especially in the early days and some of Ford’s ideas were helpful. The single most useful advice we had on daytime sleep came from The Contented Baby, and this was to manage things in terms not so much of how long your children stay down but how long they are awake before their naps. That to me was a revelation.

Oh, just one more – ok, two. Murkoff, Eisenberg and Hathaway’s What to expect books are useful aide memoires, and surprisingly amusing, too. But we wouldn’t be without Penelope Leach. Baby and Child [Penguin 1989] might be a bit old now, but to me Leach is the guru. I hang on her every word.